"It's a question," said Sir Julian, very distinctly, "of exactly how long she can stand her ground. She is a very intelligent person, and, unless I am greatly mistaken, a very sensitive one, and my own opinion is that she will be defeated early in the day by the mere atmospheric pressure against her."
"You mean that she will feel, without having it put into words, that things can't go on as they are at present?"
"It wouldn't need very keen perceptions to have come to that conclusion already."
"Perhaps not." Lady Rossiter spoke thoughtfully. "You see, the one thing one doesn't want, is to have things put into words."
Sir Julian, disagreeing with her even more completely than he usually did, answered nothing.
"It's Mark I'm thinking of principally. At the present moment I honestly believe that Mark, who is exceptionally simple, hardly realises that anything has upset the College. Certainly he won't attribute it—yet—to the way in which that unfortunate young woman has been behaving."
"Why should he attribute it to her behaviour any more than to his own?" Sir Julian reasonably enquired. "It usually requires the behaviour of two people to start this sort of idiotic gossiping."
"Mark has been foolish, I daresay," coldly said Lady Rossiter. "All men are alike in these matters, and when a woman hurls herself at a man's head you can't expect him not to take a certain amount of advantage."
"Of what, exactly, has this hurling consisted?" demanded Sir Julian, with an air of judicial impartiality.
"You have seen quite as much as I have," Lady Rossiter mistakenly informed him; "she never has a civil word for anyone else, and she is perfectly brazen in boasting of the amount of extra work she does for him. She haunted the estate office when that other girl was ill, and took over her typewriting work in the calmest way. Of course, it was practically impossible for Mark to refuse, when she insisted. And, of course, there's her fashion of getting him to walk home with her after dark every night."